


Anything But

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Prisoner (1967)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 06:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17441963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: The new Number Two is not seriously concerned by the possibility of failure. Number Six might have proved difficult so far but everyone is fallible.  Strictly speaking, it would be more correct to say that everyone else is fallible.  Number Two has never considered himself to fall in the category of "everyone".Number Six doesn't think of himself as infallible either but he'll be damned if he'll make it easy for anyone to take him down. This Two will doubtless come and go like the others did.  It's the power behind that ridiculous basket chair that matters. Just who is Number One?





	Anything But

__

_I can learn to resist_  
_Anything but temptation_  
_I can learn to co-exist_  
_With anything but pain_

__

__

_I can learn to compromise_  
_Anything but my desires_  
_I can learn to get along_  
_With all the things I can't explain_

Rush _Resist_

 

The essence of the Village is compromise. Compromise and live.

There are people who refuse, of course. They will not sleep in the beds allocated to them, they will not eat the food or observe the curfew or stay within the bounds or refrain from attacking their fellow residents. The system kills them swiftly, usually without deliberate decision or noticeable regret, but each time a report goes to Other Powers and over time fewer such people have been sent here, presumably going instead to encounter more conventional interrogation.

Number Six compromises enough to survive and no more. It is the final step between compromise and co-operation, usually such a trivial one, that he resists with all his…well, let’s call it a soul, for now. 

Number Two, who had a name a week ago and fully intends to have that name again in due course, watches Six sleeping in his Village bed in his Village house. Shortly Six will make himself a Village breakfast and go out to his current Village job, earning credits to spend at the Village shop. After work he has scheduled a game of tennis with a group of casual acquaintances, none of whom have any distinguishing features or numbers higher than 30. There are of course no regular activities here suitable for doing on one’s own. Alone is not encouraged.

Six leads such an ordinary life, as lives are measured here. You would not be able to tell from watching him as Two watches him through the ubiquitous surveillance devices that he is the one resident whose soul is still his own.

Two has read the files, of course. The same three scenarios will play out today, or this week, or this month, or this year. Six will continue to live his mundane life in the Village. Or he will try to escape, yet again. Or he will be broken. 

Two has read the files more carefully than anyone else and moreover he has understood the significance of their contents. He has arrived here with no drugs, no devices, no decoys. He does not intend to attempt to batter or bribe or bully Six into co-operating. It’s not a one-man job to break a man like Six. As the expression goes, it takes a village. Fortunately, a Village is precisely what Two has to hand.

 

 

They are learning, it seems. 

Six sits back in his favourite armchair and sips tea from his favourite porcelain cup. He thinks of himself as Six now. That doesn’t mean what they think it means- quite the opposite. He doesn’t intend to enlighten them.

Two weeks, by his reckoning, since the new Number Two took up residence in the green dome. Six has not been summoned there for breakfast or lunch, for pointless threats or confrontation. No beautiful, distressed ladies have fallen into his arms. No strange dreams, no odd experiences, no suspiciously convenient openings for escape. 

He has seen the new Number Two just twice, from a distance. The man has not been as active in the Village as some of his predecessors but nor has he been hiding away. Six had spotted him briefly getting out of a taxi in front of the Town Hall, and again sitting with hands folded in his lap in the back of one of the speeding official cars. Six had seen no reason to stop and stare on either occasion. The man’s physical appearance- around 6ft tall, middle aged with a visible paunch, a receding hairline and a supercilious expression- was likely to be the least important thing about him. 

The only thing that had given Six any pause for thought at all was the fact that the man was wearing a beautifully tailored pinstriped three-piece suit at if it were a second skin, exactly as if he’d stepped straight out of a Whitehall office. Instead of a cane he had twirled a black umbrella as he strode into the hall.

That’s not really playing the game, Six had thought as he walked on. Whoever you used to be, you’re in the Village now, Number Two, where appearing ridiculous is obligatory. You’re a number, not a free man. If you want to survive here you’d better learn to compromise, fast. 

 

Number Thirty-Three has not turned up for their game. Six, gleaming in spotless tennis whites, slams balls over the net into the empty courts for quarter of an hour then gives up on waiting. 

Instead of heading back towards his house he starts walking in long fast strides through the centre of the Village towards the curving drive up to the Hospital. This direction has more to do with the unexpected gap in his evening schedule and his need for some more exercise than in any real expectation of tracking down his missing opponent. In his experience, 'missing' is never a state that rectifies itself in the Village. Thirty-Three has almost certainly disappeared for good. 

On the other hand, people must do ordinary accidental things like sprain their ankles occasionally, even here. What happens to them? Are they just disposed of as defective, or might the Hospital have an ancillary purpose, when it isn't hard at work facilitating torture, of actually treating the sick? 

The charming young man at the reception with Seventeen on his badge says, "One moment please," in response to Six's civil query. He presses some buttons and considers the screen firmly tilted away from any curious unauthorised eyes. 

"Thirty-Three - yes, we have a record of admission for treatment for a sprained ankle earlier today. It says here that he was discharged shortly afterwards and left by taxi just under an hour ago." 

He smiles warmly at Six. "That's all the record says. I expect you will be able to find your friend resting up at home. I could find out if the treating physician is available to provide further information if you like?"

"Thank you, but that won't be necessary." Six salutes him with the ubiquitous 'be seeing you' and sets off back down the path. 

Two things strike him about this exchange. The first is that the notion of medical privacy clearly holds no sway here. No surprise there. The second is that of all the many minor conditions that might require brief and unscheduled medical treatment, Thirty-Three happens to be suffering from precisely the one that Six had imagined on the walk up to the Hospital. 

Six’s interest in Thirty-Three's welfare extends no further than a sense of very mild relief that the man isn't dead after all. He has been useful as an opponent, his serve and return currently both being slightly better than Six's, but he is a complete bore off the tennis court and it is of course not wise to get attached to anyone here. If Thirty-Three has indeed just suffered a sprain he will doubtless recover in the usual amount of time. There is no need whatsoever for Six to go to the trouble of visiting the invalid to offer what would only be artificial sympathies. 

The coincidence about the sprained ankle nags at him though, and he finds himself veering off the direct route home towards the rather crowded edge of the village that houses most of its higher numbered inhabitants. His experience so far suggests that anything out of the ordinary in the Village that affects him, however tangentially, is best assumed to be aimed at him. Previous Twos have called him paranoid but they've always been out to get him so that particular criticism doesn't really carry much weight. 

Cheerful passers-by are delighted to direct Six to the right house. The window is obscured by a huge bunch of freesias but Six can just see past them to Thirty-Three, on the sofa with his bandaged foot propped up on a foot stool. The Village Magazine lies open beside him but his eyes are closed and he appears to be asleep. 

Thirty-Three is a short, lightweight man about the same age as Six and with a tendency to sport the rather desperate fixed grin that is common in the Village. In repose he looks older and there are lines of unhappiness on his face, though it may just be that his ankle hurts. 

As Six is here now he might as well go in, he supposes, though something about the sight of such a conventionally predictable tableau has convinced him that he will learn nothing useful. He moves from window to door and knocks loudly. 

 

Bureaucracy is the same the world over. In the month since he arrived, Two has pruned and promoted, extended and streamlined procedures, all while maintaining the essential bizarre metaphors of the system that he has inherited. The challenge of managing employees who are both captors and captives is not as difficult as it might seem; after all the British Civil Service is full of such. Now he is fully confident of the system he has at his disposal. He listens to the conversation between Six and Thirty-Three; there are pictures, of course but he is multi-tasking, his eyes on the papers he is considering. If what is on the large screen becomes significant one of his people will advise him and he will go back and review the video. 

Thirty-Three is apologetic for missing their appointment. Six assures him that it doesn't matter and asks after the ankle. Thirty-Three launches into a long explanation - he spilt grease on the kitchen floor that morning while making breakfast and stupidly skidded on it as he came in after work. Everyone was most helpful and the people at the Hospital couldn't have been nicer but here he is, stuck on the sofa for goodness knows how long. 

Thirty-Three does not say "bored". Nobody in the Village is ever bored, or unhappy, or frustrated. 

"Did he look?" Two asks. 

"Yes Sir," Number Fourteen confirms. A glance at the kitchen floor - well, it's only natural. The floor gleams, spotless. Not evidence of anything. Floors get cleaned all the time. Except by Thirty-Three, who walked away from a spill and forgot about it. Perhaps. But what about the maids who scurry everywhere in the mornings?

"Will you need any help while you're off your feet?" Six sounds positively solicitous. "Cooking and cleaning, that sort of thing?" 

Oh yes, that was neatly done, Six. Two has no trouble seeing why he's presented such a problem. What will Thirty-Three reply? 

"I'll be fine. The maid comes in three times a week and one of my neighbours has promised to drop by every day and cook my meals. She's a lovely girl - do you know her? Fifty-One?"

Six doesn't know Fifty-One. He also doesn't know whether Thirty-Three is lying about the greasy floor or whether it was one of the maid’s off days. He doesn't know what the significance of his tennis partner spraining an ankle, or pretending to sprain an ankle, might be. He is suspicious as hell but for the moment he has nowhere to direct those suspicions. 

Six makes a minimal amount of further small talk and leaves. He does not offer to visit Thirty-Three again. And Two returns his full attention to other matters, for the moment.


End file.
